The boy wiped the sweat dripping down the side of his forehead, his steps long, trying to catch up without tripping on tree roots of the forest. Three others followed behind him, while a girl with long dark blonde hair lead up front, almost leaping across the forest ground as she avoided roots and mud and ants nests as if she had memorised the floor plan. She only glanced back a bit, pausing for a few seconds to let her friends catch up before starting again. The boy at the end of the line scrunched his eyebrows at the top of his nose in frustration.

"We'll be there soon enough, come on," the girl ahead replied.

"Will, you're not much slower than her," a girl with jet black hair and a nose ring called from behind. "It's really getting on my self esteem."

"Your constant refusal to join me at the gym calls for it," Will replied, smirking while wiping his blond hair back. "Hey Ella, break time," he called at the girl further up. She glanced back, rolled her eyes and stopped in her tracks, crossing her arms.

"I'm not into putting myself through voluntary pain," Lorenza told.

"Can we not talk about working out right now?" the girl just behind Will asked. She was two feet shorter than him with glasses slipping down her nose bridge, and just as much sweat as Will but refused to slow down - she'd rather not be left behind. "Ella, can we please know where you're bringing us? Maybe we'll be a bit more excited about this."

"We would have found out by now if you guys wouldn't be such babies about this," she replied from afar. "Literally, we're a minute away."

"I better not be disappointed," the other boy, standing at about Lorenza's height, said in a low voice as he passed the other three, wanting to get a head start. He had dark skin and curls at the top of his head, his temper holding up only until now.

"Chill out, Chad," Will patted the guy on the back before he followed along.

"Come on, Hedy," Lorenza said as she passed the girl with glasses. Hedy gave a deep sigh. At the back of the line, as expected, she thought to herself.

Not far from where they had stopped, Ella turned to look at the team. She gave a grin, holding her arms out at the clearing. The patch contrasted to the rest of the forest, in which the trees had turned into stumps and roots into bumpy soils, leaves gathered into patches randomly. On top of one of the stumps lay a shovel and gardening gloves. "You will never guess what lies beneath these soils."

"Dead bodies?" Will joked without smiling.

"Actually, you're spot on."

The rest of the group went silent. Lorenza spoke up first.

"Are you... serious?"

"Yes, I am," Ella grinned as she reached for the shovel and started digging at one of the what seemed like random bumps of soil, but now resembles graves to the group, with the patches or leaves cleverly disguised as headstones.

"You're really creeping me out, Ella," Hedy announced as she hugged her own torso in discomfort.

"It's like what we talked about, guys," she told in between breaths. "The world isn't going to make anymore sense if we keep letting idiots lead us. We have to do something about it, and where do we start? Right at home, of course." She stopped digging, wiping at her forehead. She then reached down to dust off some of the soil, then pulled out a detached head by the hair from the ground. Hedy gave a half-screech half-gasp, but stopped herself, closing her mouth with her hands.

"What the fuck?" Chad shouted. "Is that... Principal Gully?"

"Yea that idiot of a principal we have. Shouldn't have suspended me for writing a paper on how the government was spending too much on military. Sucks to be him."

"Ella you not only insulted the president but also the entire office for a class taught by a proud Republican. It was called for," Lorenza tried to reason. It seemed useless now though, since the principal didn't even have a drop of blood in his brain anymore. "Is there... more of these?"

"Well the principal and Ms. Shrewder, that proud Republican is a good start, but next, the president, then, the world, of course."

"Ella you're fucking insane," Chad said in a shaky voice. "We can't go around killing people for the small stupid decisions they make."

"Oh, yea, we're not gonna kill every single idiot out there, well not yet," Ella explained as she waved the head around with pride. "We start at the top then we work our way down. See how easy it is to get to the principal? With a few more practice killings we might as well book for a flight to DC now."

"I'm getting the fuck out of here," Chad announced, pacing towards the way they came from.

"Not so fast," Ella said calmly, pulling a pistol out of her jacket pocket, pointing at Hedy. "You go and this girl dies."

"Bullshit," Chad called. Ella pulled at the trigger, and Hedy screamed as a bullet shot through her thighs. Chad stopped in his tracks, and Lorenza went to catch the girl as she dropped to her knees, both trying to stop the blood from flowing out.

"Anything else you're gonna call out as bullshit?" Ella asked. She tossed the head at Will, letting him see it up close. "As you can see, I'm not about bullshitting."

Will had a good look at the principal's wrinkled face - his thin lips were curved downwards, slightly parted, his eyelids revealed the maggots underneath already starting to feast on his eyeballs. The boy dropped the head at the sight of the maggots, almost bursting into tears out of fear and disgust.

"Ella, it was all talk, okay?" Lorenza said, her voice a mixture of fear and calm. "We didn't really think of killing anyone. We can stop this right now. Killing is wrong, especially when they didn't do anything to deserve to die. We won't be able to get away with it anyway. We're just five high school kids."

Another bullet went through Lorenza's forehead, in between her eyes. Hedy screamed again as the body next to her turned limp. Tears started to form as she sobbed. The two boys shook in their places as they glared at Ella in fear. The girl looked away, her hands shaking. Despite being the new girl in town, Lorenza had been the one who let Ella into her circle. For once in her five years of switching schools every few months, Ella felt like she belonged somewhere. Why did Lorenza had to defy her like this? Why couldn't she just accept who Ella was for who she is?

once I dreamt of a great adventure
where we fought the demons
that clawed its way
through our souls
we were on our knees
skin smudged with blood and dust
when I woke up
by the sound of morning classes
and dreaded judgement

once I dreamt of a great love story
I watched you pass by on a bicycle
from the inside of a bus
that was our last goodbye
when I woke up
you never left
but you never loved me neither

once I dreamt a tragedy
but the greater fragments
are lost through reality
I do not remember where we were
only that you were there

maybe our desire to live
made us hope
for stories we were told
through pages bound
in between our slumbers
be it fighting demons
or romance turned tragedy
I wish to live a dream
to live
for something more.

you avoid meeting too many people
you don't like noises
and big crowds
when you get attached
you distance yourself
under the mask that you've created
no one will see
the timidness behind it
your scarred and fearful face

then one day someone tries to break it
and the fear that you'll be figured out
turns to anger
to violence

because there are two types of troubling people in this world
the ones who talk too much
and the ones who don't talk enough

when i first met you
i saw sadness in your eyes
in the thin tuffs of hair behind your ears
in your hands of protruding bones
so i made up stories
about fixing you
that would never come true

in between our awkward conversations
i made a world where
he and she shared the stars of the night sky
they shared their daydreams
and whispered love
you would have never cared anyway

when i was leaving
i wrote that he left first
but it didn't matter anyway
there was nothing between us but fiction
then i met him
and saw your sadness
in the tuffs of his hair behind his ears
in his hands of protruding bones
and it is not fair

you are not him.
why do i think about you
when there is nothing to remember
but the world that i created?